Archive for August, 2013

Take a look at this picture and try to figure out what this is.
I’ll wait….don’t read below yet…

Actually, all it is, is a lunar eclipse between the TWO MOONS of Mars, FROM Mars perspective! So, in other words, that is what you would see, if YOU were on Mars when this happened recently. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Since we have one, the only eclipses for us can be solar or (1) lunar, where the Sun and Moon interplay. But on Mars, since there is a 2nd Moon, there can be interplay between all three sky objects, and this is a shot of a lunar eclipse of one moon over the OTHER moon there!
Kewl eh?

No one wants an accurate forecast for you more than yours truly. When the forecast goes awry, I scratch my head, it affects my mood (adversely), and I ponder and worry about how it could have happened. Fortunately, it isn’t a frequent occurance (as I’d hope you’d agree)…but a new supercomputer upgrade for NOAA will (hopefully) improve not just accuracy of the computer models, but increase the SPEED at which they are churned out…give us not only more time to study them but more frequent updates on them as well. AS you can see now, if true, these things should, especially in combination, result in better forecasts in general.

I always marvel at our sun. In fact, I marvel at all the stars, which are of course, suns of their own. And when I heard for the first time or two that our sun is really an ordinary star…as stars go…and yet ours marvels us…wow. Ordinary, by universal standards? How much greater are those others? Wow.

And when I see this, I often wonder how the sun holds itself together when it appears to be exploding! It’s easy to imagine the apocalypse when you see this stuff!

Anyway, our sun goes through an eleven year cycle of maximum and minimum solar activity (amazing how scientists figured this out, especially given we cant LOOK DIRECTLY AT THIS THING! How do you study something you CANT LOOK AT!) We are approaching the peak for this cycle, but they say it is at a century low for a maximum cycle. But, those who are connected to everything cyber/phone panic because of the effects of solar flares, radiation, etc.

Would you fly a small AT-6 “Texas” trainer plane into a Hurricane, on a bet? For a single whiskey highball?
What if I told you this happened, and happened with technology from 70 years ago?!
Apparently, that’s how the first hurricane hunter flight came to be!

Fortunately, he survived, and it led to the pattern of hurricane hunter aircraft that routinely go into hurricanes and tropical storm, to send back vital information on the storms, strength, and direction.

Before touching on the topic, I want to define terms, so we are all speaking the same language.
You should know that there are two terms, often used interchangeably, and they are NOT the same.
“Global Warming” is about natural Earth “cycles”, that occur (naturally) over hundreds and thousands of years.
“Greenhouse Gas Warming” is all about man-made warming…fossil-fuels and gases, etc.

There are two great difficulties in determining which is occurring.
One is the lack of length in record keeping. BOTH of the warming terms above require hundreds and thousands of years of records to prove either, and clearly, we only have reputable records for roughly 150 years, depending on the locations.
The other problem is, suppose we are in a temperature climb, how would we know if it is part of a natural cycle climb or if it is of the man-made variety this time? I don’t know that we can ever know…until the cycle either reverses (ie, that’d prove it could be just natural), or spirals out of control (man-made).

I have my own personal/scientific opinion on the man-made issue itself, but that’s not my job or reason for this article.
I just wanted to pass along an article on the topic, to increase your understanding for such a discussion or just for knowledge sake.